How to Germinate Cannabis Seeds: Paper Towel, Jiffy or Straight to Soil?

🌱 How do you germinate cannabis seeds? 💡

To germinate cannabis seeds, place them in a moist medium (paper towel, a Jiffy pellet or soil), keep it at 26-28 °C (79-82 °F) with around 70% humidity, and never let it dry out. Germinating weed seeds is fairly quick and easy, but a few key factors make the difference between a handful of sprouts and a near-perfect germination rate. Once a seed lands in a moist growing medium, it kicks off a chain of reactions that will make it sprout within a few hours to a few days. Whatever medium you germinate in, never let it dry out completely. If the seed stops sensing moisture around it, it will most likely shut down and never germinate. Check every day that the germination medium is still moist. It's an easy step to forget, and forgetting it is how you end up with nasty surprises. If you're running a hydroponic grow, it's always best to germinate in rockwool cubes, which, of course, also need to stay moist the whole time. To avoid problems, plant your seeds once the root (the taproot) is about 1 cm long, 2 cm (under 1 in) at most.

Soil or paper towel?

When you plant a seed straight into soil, you risk burying it too deep, especially if you water the medium after putting the seed in to germinate.

The safest bet...

You'll get much better results germinating in paper towels or compressed peat pellets. Once the little sprouts are up, you transplant them into your growing medium. Cannabis seeds germinate best with fairly high temperature and humidity. At certain times of year in particular, you'll need some kind of heat source to hold the temperature at around 26-28 °C (79-82 °F). Ideally, keep your germination medium at around 26-28 °C (79-82 °F) and 70% humidity. [caption id="attachment_2493" align="aligncenter" width="411"] Germinating seeds with the paper towel method[/caption] To germinate with paper towels, make a sandwich out of a plate and damp paper towels as shown in the image. Once the seed sprouts and the root reaches 1 or 2 centimeters, move it to your growing medium. It's a safe method because you can check on your seeds just by lifting the paper.  [caption id="attachment_2492" align="aligncenter" width="388"] Germinating seeds in a Jiffy pellet[/caption] Germinating in a Jiffy (a compressed peat pellet that swells when soaked) is super practical because you skip the transplant from paper towel to medium. Just drop the seed into a pre-soaked Jiffy. Once the seed germinates and the sprout pokes 1 or 2 centimeters above the surface, bury the whole Jiffy in its new container, so you never have to handle the delicate sprout like you do with the paper towel method.